Hopefully it has better everything, because Mirrors Edge was incredibly mediocre. It had an interesting gimmick with the free running, but it wasn't realized anywhere nearly as fully as it could and should have been thanks to rigidly linear and often unintuitive level design. Though there were segments where the free running mechanic was implemented well and felt cool, the enjoyment rarely seemed to last long as you ran into more dead-ends, clunky combat, embarrassing cutscenes, etc.
I know ME has some big fans here, but I was incredibly underwhelmed with it. I hope the second installment overcomes the issues I had with the first one, at any rate. Certain aspects of it definitely look more promising.
With the spongy looking combat and the levelling system (as well as that weird massive circle telling you where enemies are) it's looking worryingly like FarCry 3/4 with free running.
[QUOTE=Big Dumb American;50140938]Hopefully it has better everything, because Mirrors Edge was incredibly mediocre. It had an interesting gimmick with the free running, but it wasn't realized anywhere nearly as fully as it could and should have been thanks to rigidly linear and often unintuitive level design. Though there were segments where the free running mechanic was implemented well and felt cool, the enjoyment rarely seemed to last long as you ran into more dead-ends, clunky combat, embarrassing cutscenes, etc.
I know ME has some big fans here, but I was incredibly underwhelmed with it. I hope the second installment overcomes the issues I had with the first one, at any rate. Certain aspects of it definitely look more promising.[/QUOTE]
Well on one hand this game being open world seems to want to encourage less dead-ends, more exploration and route-finding.
On the other hand, missions seem fine-tuned for specific routes that you may be able to improve upon, but not significantly so. Maybe it's just early game stuff that the beta represents and later missions get more open-ended, but the trailer mission of infiltrating a facility is pretty much ME1 in terms of linearity.
Ontop of this is the aforementioned concerns that the open world is going to probably suffer from being nothing more than Ubisoft-tier leveling and potentially even progression padding for a story that could've easily just been linear like the first game.
I hope we can disable some of the HUD elements.
Is it just mee or does the artstyle feel... off?
Compared to the first ME this one feels like some chinese bootleg toy, the same prinicple but it feels off.
It might be the insane amount of red shizbang from the HUD elements and the bright blue enemies, but it doesn't feel right to me.
[QUOTE=Mrfantasticool;50141711]Is it just mee or does the artstyle feel... off?
Compared to the first ME this one feels like some chinese bootleg toy, the same prinicple but it feels off.
It might be the insane amount of red shizbang from the HUD elements and the bright blue enemies, but it doesn't feel right to me.[/QUOTE]
It went from a mostly-modern aesthetic where everything was intentionally desaturated to make the red and other major colors pop more strongly when they're used; to a light sci-fi where everything looks like it's out of a bright and sunny Deus Ex or Blade Runner, the law enforcement went from people in standard police and military gear to covered faces, angular armor, and fictional assault rifles that have an almost energy-like muzzleflash, and the world strongly holds a sleek, shiny gloss tone.
It's all the same colors but an entirely different style emphasizing them.
[QUOTE=RikohZX;50141750]It's all the same colors but an entirely different style emphasizing them.[/QUOTE]
I think they're limited artistically. The original ME used UE3 and Beast for raytraced lightmaps, that's why color bounce and bleed so well.
In the new one, they're using Enlighten (Their in-house 'realtime' GI solution), and that limits their ability to bounce color around by a lot.
Watching some gameplay done on a mouse+keyboard (11:30 for some combat)
[media]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOElgUFaw4o[/media]
Looks a LOT better than the awkward jerkiness of the controller
Also, what the fuck is up with that huge circle at the center of the screen ? Did they really have to shove that much shit on the screen ?
Why is the game filled with so many generic gimmicks like tacky low-tier RPG mechanics
Hope the circle can be resized. It's big enough to be obnoxious but not big enough to not be.
[QUOTE=spekter;50132459]Locking maneuvers behind XP and having combat so prominent is gonna be an issue.[/QUOTE]
Not exactly. It's much better to not be able to use all moves from the beginning. It was something that the first lacked, because you were able to use every move from the start, there wasn't much to look after for the rest of the game in terms of new abilities.
Ugh. The lighting looks totally unbefitting of ME. What happened to the lovely-lovely radiosity bouncing around all over the place?
[QUOTE=Antimuffin;50142208]Not exactly. It's much better to not be able to use all moves from the beginning. It was something that the first lacked, because you were able to use every move from the start, there wasn't much to look after for the rest of the game in terms of new abilities.[/QUOTE]
Except the whole point of the game was how you used these maneuvers to overcome obstacles. Locking up critical moves like rolling is just artificially enhancing the challenge instead of relying on well-made levels. The fact it's open world would allow them to create all sorts of challenging areas to traverse but if it's gonna be a case of "you can't make this drop because you don't have roll recovery" then it's gonna sour whatever taste the game has.
[QUOTE=rndgenerator;50142147]Hope the circle can be resized. It's big enough to be obnoxious but not big enough to not be.[/QUOTE]
It'll likely be something you can turn off. DICE aren't particularly new to having somewhat configurable HUDs in their games. It's probably an assist that is on by default (if there are difficulty levels it likely won't be on by default on higher ones) similarly to runner vision in the first game which could be turned off.
The only things I can see not being optional would be objective markers so you can actually navigate the city.
Based on the PC Gamer gameplay, the combat is as I expected. The guard with no real armour just ate total shit, every one of the armoured ones needed several hits. The first game was quite similar, combat required a fair few solid hits to take guys down. The console gameplay will likely have a few combat assists to allow you to be a bit more lax with your aiming. Hence the slightly magnetism of the punches.
[editline]16th April 2016[/editline]
[QUOTE=Im Crimson;50142245]Ugh. The lighting looks totally unbefitting of ME. What happened to the lovely-lovely radiosity bouncing around all over the place?[/QUOTE]
There's not been a shitload of daytime gameplay out to be honest. Most of the night time areas of ME lacked the extreme radiosity as well. And it only really became noticeable in the enclosed areas full of strong artificial lights.
Personally I think it looks pretty nice. It's what I would expect the city to be if it was a few decades further ahead than in the first game. DICE were working with much, much more constrained resources back then. Less hardware power, less funding (it wasn't a Battlefield, EA would have been quite cautious) and technology they didn't really use before such as the radiosity engine hacked into UE3.
The PC Gamer gameplay seemed much better. The combat still seems like... Too much of a focus, but it seems better than the video in the OP. The visuals seem fine, I just hope there's a dialed down version of runner vision that lets you see doorways/important objectives without completely making the game 'follow the red breadcrumbs'. I'm glad they kept Faith's backstory with her parents as well, I liked that part of the first game. I am still cautiously optimistic.
[QUOTE=Zombii;50142694]The PC Gamer gameplay seemed much better. The combat still seems like... Too much of a focus, but it seems better than the video in the OP. The visuals seem fine, I just hope there's a dialed down version of runner vision that lets you see doorways/important objectives without completely making the game 'follow the red breadcrumbs'. I'm glad they kept Faith's backstory with her parents as well, I liked that part of the first game. I am still cautiously optimistic.[/QUOTE]
I turned off runner vision, completely ruins the game in my opinion. I like the challenge of finding out how to traverse the world myself.
[QUOTE=Im Crimson;50142245]Ugh. The lighting looks totally unbefitting of ME. What happened to the lovely-lovely radiosity bouncing around all over the place?[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE=glitchvid;50141761]The original ME used UE3 and Beast for raytraced lightmaps, that's why color bounce and bleed so well.
In the new one, they're using Enlighten (Their in-house 'realtime' GI solution), and that limits their ability to bounce color around by a lot.[/QUOTE]
[editline]later[/editline]
To further explain, they were able to bounce light hundreds of times (Giving any color on a white hallway a lovely 'glow'), whereas they said they only get one or two bounces now.
Also I was wrong, Enlighten isn't in-house, it's third party.
[img]http://i.imgur.com/y4xyEhp.gif[/img]
Why would you put third person in a first person game
[QUOTE=Sharker;50154699][img]http://i.imgur.com/y4xyEhp.gif[/img]
Why would you put third person in a first person game[/QUOTE]
~ •ｃｉｎｅｍａｔｉｃ ~
Or, because such acrobatics in first person would likely cause projectile vomiting. But it begs the question of why they'd have such moves in the first place.
[QUOTE=Sharker;50154699][img]http://i.imgur.com/y4xyEhp.gif[/img]
Why would you put third person in a first person game[/QUOTE]
Looks cool to me, won't be an issue I think.
Idk how I feel about the open world aspect and the RPG elements (skill tree, side missions). Of course, I don't think "omg the game is ruined", because nobody is [I]forcing[/I] me to do the side missions, but I really wish there were more linear games out there still. Telling a linear story like ME1 or HL is such a dead genre because it doesn't have the generated replayability that open world and Multiplayer have. But, personally, I feel the most immersed when the game is linear like that.
I like the aesthetics, but I like ME1 aesthetics more. They were, I think, simpler, and more tonal than what we have here, which seems to have more contrasting colors and angular shapes. I hope, above all that the soundtrack is as great as it was in the first. It seems so based on that first track they released a while ago
[QUOTE=Sharker;50154699][img]http://i.imgur.com/y4xyEhp.gif[/img]
Why would you put third person in a first person game[/QUOTE]
I like it. I'm a sucker for good animations and this looks like high quality mo-cap. It has good weight and inertia. And it won't take you too much out of the action, considering it only happens on the last enemy of a group and stops before you regain control anyway.
[QUOTE=nutcake;50155226]I like it. I'm a sucker for good animations and this looks like high quality mo-cap. It has good weight and inertia. And it won't take you too much out of the action, considering it only happens on the last enemy of a group and stops before you regain control anyway.[/QUOTE]
I absolutely hate take-down combat. It requires no skill at all other than Quicktime Events and ruins the pace of the game. Any dev that uses take-down combat is lazy and wants to replace good game design with neat animation
[QUOTE=proboardslol;50155272]I absolutely hate take-down combat. It requires no skill at all other than Quicktime Events and ruins the pace of the game. Any dev that uses take-down combat is lazy and wants to replace good game design with neat animation[/QUOTE]
In this example it doesn't look very quicktimey, it's just a finisher animation but I get what you mean.
[QUOTE=proboardslol;50155272]I absolutely hate take-down combat. It requires no skill at all other than Quicktime Events and ruins the pace of the game. Any dev that uses take-down combat is lazy and wants to replace good game design with neat animation[/QUOTE]
It's not takedown combat. All it does is play a fancy animation when you finish last enemy. The actual combat, while not looking too promising, is anything but QTE.
Faith being someone who's supposed to run away from the police wouldn't it make more sense for her to do Judo or something. Just focus on throwing your enemies to the ground to give yourself time to run away, rather than doing complicated flips and the like.
[QUOTE=rndgenerator;50155084]Looks cool to me, won't be an issue I think.[/QUOTE]
Won't be an issue for the first five times and then once you've seen them all and you gotta sit through the same goddamn moves for the fiftieth time it'll be an issue.
Human Revolution also had cool takedown moves, and then you finish the first level and they're not so cool anymore.
[QUOTE=RichyZ;50155420]
Faith is pretty strong and most judo throws aren't really taxing on the body
[/QUOTE]
Yeah, I was saying she should use Judo. Getting slammed to the ground hurts, it shakes your whole body. It's perfect for someone like Faith who should be more focused on getting away than knocking people out. You don't need to knock the cops out, just hurt them in a way that prevents them from following you, which they have difficulty doing in the first place.
Honestly if Faith is going to fight she should just have the most straight forward, direct and least fair style possible. She doesn't have to look cool or to be acrobatic, she just has to land the meanest sucker punch in the shortest span possible to knock out whoever is in front of her without losing momentum.
Which is kind of what the first game did seeing as you could slide into people and kick/punch them in the dick as the fastest way to get rid of threats.
Doing a stupid cartwheel over a dude to snap his arm and then slap their shit with a baton for like five seconds doesn't seem to fit a character whose job involves jumping through windows and ramming through doors at full speed.
[QUOTE=Ganerumo;50155527]
Doing a stupid cartwheel over a dude to snap his arm and then slap their shit with a baton for like five seconds [b]doesn't seem to fit a character[/b] whose job involves jumping through windows and ramming through doors at full speed.[/QUOTE]
Post on their forums, maybe they'll implement new, less flashy animations.
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